


Forces of Nature

by halocentury



Series: kyluxxoxo 19 [6]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Canon-Typical Violence, Caves, First Order Missions, Lightning - Freeform, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-TLJ, Thunderstorms, force possession, let the past die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 03:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20128741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halocentury/pseuds/halocentury
Summary: Sent to Ahch-To, in hopes to find some clue where the fledgling Resistance is fleeing to, Hux reminisces.The Force has other plans for him.





	Forces of Nature

**Author's Note:**

> Submission for Week 6 of kyluxxoxo. The theme is mountain top. I set out to fill a line but I lucked out and managed to squeeze in all nine prompts. The prompts, not in order, are snow / top / belt / race / over / cloud / one / bottom / cave.
> 
> I prefer to not list the surprise of the fic up front, but if in the case the "force possession" tag is of concern, the surprise is included in the end notes.

If it wasn’t for the rain his clothes and hair would be whipping around. His coat usually made him appear broader but currently that wasn’t the case, folded into and plastered against his narrow frame, and the rain had his hair tucked well below the collar, longer and shellacked to his skull. 

Yet up at the highest peak, the rain a hail on his face, stung and made his body sing with nostalgia. 

He climbed to the top, not that it was a necessity. A few troopers followed after him, his gesture to accompany him almost unnecessary. Those birds were a nuisance but they weren’t proving to be lethal. When their shuttle arrived in the scant bay and beach, the most flat portion of the island, he saw olive-skinned beings scuttling back and forth above them. Then the rain was only a gentle spatter, but they had known better, disappearing into several stone houses. 

Now it was a full out storm. The point he stood on was rocky, and perhaps he was too close to the edge, but it reminded him too much of Arkanis that he didn’t want to step back.

He let his gaze span the horizon, dip to each discernable portion of the land that was laid before and around him. By the naked eye nothing stood out, but he could see an jagged edge, an opening in the face of a nearby cliff, that suggested a cavern within. Perhaps there he would find something valuable. 

Kylo – no, the Supreme Leader – was determined to snuff out the remains of the Resistance and choke them out for good. It did have its merits, to ensure they wouldn’t be scrambling around to their strongholds and preventing the expansion of the First Order to all the corners of the galaxy. But first they needed to strengthen their numbers, and reputation, after the foolish defeat on Crait. 

He had been about to suggest that he could analyse the trajectories, not to mention exclude where the scavenger came from previously, and examine particle and residue left over from the engines and drives before jumping into hyperspace, determine the length of the residue to suggest how much energy was converted to distance and time, to narrow down where they were going. 

It was when that thought crossed his mind, his parted lips ready to inform the sulking child, that everything started spiralling, backwards.

“Supreme Leader.” He managed to keep the distaste clean from his face, even though he felt ready to wretch when the words dragged up bile into his throat. “I could suggest how we can trace the path the Resistance took in their flight from Crait. Yet… is there a chance that where that girl was, previously before she came to the Supremacy, that there could be an indication on that planet where they might flee to next? Would Skywalker have given her the name of someone who could aid them?”

Kylo perked up. His gaze remained hooded but he was alert, encouraging him to continue. 

Kylo insisted he couldn’t be distracted from his own task. Confident that he could unite and reform the Force Bond between himself and Rey to track her he put him in charge of the investigation. When the calculations him and his team came up to produce two possible planets, he was able to choose one based on the singular description Kylo gave him of the planet.

Wet.

Hux smirked up to the clouds, relishing in his sodden clothes.

“Take a small troop over to that cliff.” Gesturing out with his right hand to the opening he had spotted, he cast a glance over his shoulder. “Climb up to the ledge and you will find an open passage. I’m sure we will find something valuable for the Supreme Leader.”

Thunder rumbled from above the clouds. The storm wasn’t lessening and Hux dared to not stay too much longer on the slippery edge. Turning while the stormtroopers trotted off, a slow race to claim a few more troopers to join them, he walked skillfully down the wet decline. One doesn’t forget the careful dance one learned as a child on Arkanis.

His foot slid forward an inch when the wind carried the rumble closer to his ear, but he didn’t lose his straight-back walk or loosen his hands from behind him.

He hadn’t walked more than a minute, less than, when out of the corner of his eye, a water spout formed a broad funnel, tall but not to the previous peak he stood on. Still close to the edge he ventured a little closer. He could remember some of the sea life that occupied the seas and bays of Arkanis. Having only seen the birds and those mismatched dressed peoples he knew there had to be other wildlife on the planet.

He expected to do see the massive form of a fish, below the surface of the water, or baring a portion of its head or back above the churning waves, but instead he found himself staring down to a wide expanse of rock, made smooth from the constant cycle of the sea, back and forth, polishing the sea floor into its new form. In the middle of this flattened rock, previously unseen, was a gaping hole, surrounded by sparse kinds of sea plants, possibly grass or moss. 

Brow furrowed he glanced around, trying to find the easiest path down.

Several minutes later he stood back from the hole, inspecting it but not moving closer. From his new standing point it looked like the underside of a tree, had their been any tree at some point. Thin roots snaking down the edge of the hole, moss and grass, wet and dark as oil, oozing deep under the island. Little spots of lichen fighting for its own space.

Distantly he wondered if any of it would mean something to Kylo, if there was a connection to Luke, the Force or a clue of what next could happen. He wasn’t in the on-ship labs but he came prepared; easing his hand into the inner pocket of his great coat he pulled out three small vials. Sliding his knife out from under his sleeve he crouched down, prepared to scrape portions of each to deposit into their own containers.

He knew he was far enough back, that the rock was solid under his feet, but something buckled with the next burst of thunder. 

Careening forward, headfirst into the hole, his voice absent in the indignity of it all, he fell. Knowing he should be able to grab onto something he grasped frantically for anything, rock, weeds, roots, but his fall only stopped when he swallowed water, continuing to plunge down.

The vials were lost to the depths of the sea, probably already sunken to the bottom of the sea floor. They were a frivolity he was willing to forsake, too grateful that his knife caught in the fabric of his greatcoat in his fall, still there while he looked up to the distant light above him, above the waterline. Soaked from head to toe, and weighed down by heavy fabric, he yanked his knife loose. It was relatively easy to shrug the coat free from his arms and shoulders but even the tunic underneath was pulling him closer to the bottom. 

Getting a better grip on his knife, he sliced through the belt over his tunic, yanked it through the seams of the tunic until it was ripped in half. He would worry about getting his heavy boots off once he was out of the water, his lungs already straining. His arms were free, and lighter, that he swam frantically for the surface.

Breaking through, gasping for air, heaving, he swam towards a mostly dry shelf of rocks, a roughly secure ground past the pool of water he didn’t want to go splashing into.

Cold in just his undershirt and jodhpurs, he tucked his knife his pants. He had to look strange, barely dressed from the waist up, gloves too tight on his hands, but there was no one else in the cave to judge him. If he was in an underwater cave, or at least a cave somehow beneath the island, he had to find his way up someway. If he didn’t find a way up his only choice was to go swimming again, to the gap in the behind him. If this was in, the gap had to lead to out. 

After his preliminary inspection of the cave he brought his gaze forward, surprised to see himself. Recoiling, expecting a Force trick by the likes of Skywalker, or even Kylo, far away as he was, he watched his face grow smaller opposite of him. 

Cocking his head in time with his other, Hux stepped forward again. They grew closer together until he lifted his hand, his fingers stretching out.

Huffed and shook his head, smirking when his fingers found translucent glass. It didn’t show through to the rock behind it, but what stood before it. Himself, so that he touched his mirror reflection.

“Not the Force.” Not this time at least. Chest loosening he dropped his hand.

Except in the mirror before him he wasn’t empty handed. He was fully dressed, great coat dry and wide through the shoulders and torso. His hand was sliding into the coat. Hux bit his lip when he could feel the weight of his blaster in his own real hand, non-existent as his blaster was left on the shuttle, realising what his reflection was implying. 

It was no play of water over the mirror surface that caused the ripple, consternation replacing concentration on the older – well, younger face. Only a few days prior to now, standing and watching the soot and rock stains that whitened the shoulders of his great coat.

He could feel the shiver of snow sliding down his bare shoulders. He didn’t need the background image, seeing the burn and implosion of Starkiller underfoot in his own mind whiled he ran to find Kylo. 

This was the Force, replaying the last two weeks before his wide eyes. The wide eyes that stared back at him were not full of fear or cold fury but heated, bare hands grasping at something unseen. His whole body was naked, writhing, crooking and bending to accommodate for something. Someone?

And then the face changed, the body filled out. It wasn’t his own, as far as he could tell, though the calculating and confident air was much like his own.

The storm raged outside and without warning, a wave swept from sea into the cave, rocking up out of the pool, a force of nature that collided with his back, smashing him fully into the mirror.

He thought he heard something roar through his mind, not just the noise of the sea, racketing into his bones, spilling into his lungs with salt and smoke and burning pain.

He jolted again, but was restrained by bedsheets and Kylo’s body, curled up behind him, arm tight over him.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe, convinced he was still drowning on dry land, dry Star Destroyer as it was. Coughing and hacking, struggling to sit up, Kylo woke up because of the struggle, hand rubbing along his back, across his shoulders, from neck down to waist.

“Are you okay?” Kylo mumbled, sealing himself against his back, chest and arms still sweaty from before falling asleep.

Groaning into his hand, waiting for his body to stop trembling, Hux nodded. Glanced to his chronometer. He was ten minutes ahead of his alarm. In less than an hour he’d be boarding the shuttle to Ahch-To. “I should start getting ready.”

Jolting again, crushed to the wall, clutching for purchase against the smooth mirrored wall of the cave, thunder shook the island all the way to the bottom, into the cave. 

Outside lightning cracked through the clouds, into the water. Fizzled upon contact, and unexplainably, contrary to all natural and scientific proof and data, currents carried currents, water providing flow to the electricity that dug down and in. 

His body spasmed in the water, electricity shocking him to his core. 

Agony ricocheted, lining his face into a replica of the one that watched him, grinning and making grabbing hands, hands that pierced through rock, mirror and wall. 

Long tendrils that weren’t fingers wrapped around his throat, squeezing just so to open his mouth, struggling for breath.

He wasn’t cackling but someone was, louder and looming over him. 

Blue eyes flashed gold, subsuming him from the outside in.

_We are One. By The Will of the Force._

Hux collapsed to his hands and knees, released. Breathed threadily, stared at the sparks that tapped out from his nails to the wet rock underneath. 

A tiny voice wailed inside for Kylo, diminished. Unheard. 

A manic grin replaced his cackling as he stood, newly strong and young.

There was much to be gained from Skywalkers before reclaiming the Galaxy for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Mister Sheev Palpatine, Emperor Palpatine to all his enemies, is prepared to meet a new era.


End file.
